


your very own ghost

by norikae



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Kinda, M/M, Time Travel, but its just jun, but just in case, cw: mention of person accidentally falling off bridge, no death results!! there is no death here, that's it basically, time destabilisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norikae/pseuds/norikae
Summary: His face blossomed into a grin, as he jabbed his hand out towards Minghao in friendly greeting. “Nice to meet you,” he greeted. “I’m Junhui.”Minghao didn’t believe in ghosts. Not really. But when he took the hand and the palm was warm and solid beneath his grip, he squeezed just a little harder than he had to, just to be sure. In his plastic bag the discount pack of kimbap was probably getting warm.“Minghao,” he offered, in reply to the querying gaze, “And I really need you to tell me what just went on.”





	your very own ghost

**Author's Note:**

> ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm MY ADVICE is dont think too hard i ate too much for christmas that's basically how this came about. enjoy

There was a man on the bridge.

It was the first thing Minghao registered, on his way back to his student dorm at twenty-five minutes past three in the morning. Upon the low rails lining the walkway he sat, legs kicking idly as he watched the water down below. He looked oddly peaceful, even considering the precarious position he was in.

Something about the image made Minghao come to a stop. His right hand fell slack, loaded GS25 plastic bag swinging loosely as his phone screen came instead to illuminate the dark washed material of his jeans on his thigh. In the sticky late night blew a muggy breeze.

“Oh, hello,” said the figure, turning to look at him. His hair was a light, in-between sort of brown, and his eyes were large and dark in the night. Minghao fidgeted a little bit, regretting whatever it was that had made him halt in his tracks.

“Good day,” he said, stiffly, and then promptly proceeded on his way down the bridge that he had to cross to get back to the main road that wove near the dormitories. Below the bridge ran a massive storm drain, the sort that could prevent flooding in the monsoon season, feeding back into the Han River through a series of tributaries and other streams. Presently it raged with a degree of ferocity, water sloshing around darkly against the high concrete sides.

“Hey – no, don’t go, I wanted to say – _aaaaah_ ,” he heard, and then when Minghao turned to look backwards it was in horror as he saw the man twist around, too-fast, to try to grab his attention, dislodging himself from his perch. As he tipped off his position was strangely graceful, almost as if he had done this before. Minghao suppressed the fear knocking about in his chest, the racing of bile up his throat as he jolted forward and into the railings, reaching out a helpless hand in desperation. Except –

Except, when he looked over, there was no body hurtling into the inky depths. He listened, but was sure he hadn’t heard a sound. No tell-tale splash as frame hits water, and even as he forced himself to remember it seemed as if the yell had cut off abruptly instead of tapering off. As if a video had been paused in the middle.

“God, that makes the third time this week now.”

Minghao jumped at the voice behind his shoulder, startling so badly it took all of his willpower not to let out a shriek. Watched in abject horror as the ghost of the man he had just seen came up alongside him, and peered over the railing, too, squinting hard at the crashing waves below. “Sorry you had to see that. Haha. Awkward.”

“You just,” Minghao said, finding his voice suddenly, even as it came out something far closer to a croak. “I swear I saw you fall.”

“I mean, I could tell you that you didn’t,” the man said, “But that would be lying.” And then his face blossomed into a grin, as he jabbed his hand out towards Minghao in friendly greeting. “Nice to meet you,” he greeted. “I’m Junhui.”

Minghao didn’t believe in ghosts. Not really. But when he took the hand and the palm was warm and solid beneath his grip, he squeezed just a little harder than he had to, just to be sure. In his plastic bag the discount pack of kimbap was probably getting warm.

“Minghao,” he offered, in reply to the querying gaze, “And I really need you to tell me what just went on.”

 

\---

 

Junhui looked at him from where he was hanging upside down on the monkey bars, knees locked lazily across two adjacent poles as he dangled himself from side to side. Then he smiled, at first slowly before it bloomed into a grin that took up half his face.

“What’cha doin?” In the dim light of the streetlamps his features cast eerie, separated starkly into warm light and shadow.

Minghao glanced up, hands fiddling with the knobs on his camera even when he wasn’t looking. “Trying to get a shot,” he said, very perfunctorily, and then brought it up to his eye, snapping a photo with a _click_ and the ugly loud whirr of a flash.

“ _Ow_ ,” Junhui whined. “I wasn’t prepared!” But still his face was caught in that half smile he had, like there was something he knew. Gently he swayed side to side, still the wrong way up.

Discreetly, Minghao checked his screen. Sniped, “Neither was I, when you fell off a bridge and ended up behind me. But here we are anyway.”

There was a giggle, and when he turned Junhui’s eyes were creased, twin cutouts in his fae-like features. “You should’ve seen your face, Hao,” he said, “Like you’d seen a ghost.”

Minghao felt his brow crease. He checked his camera display again, then flicked it off before he said, “It certainly seemed like I had.” Then he walked over to the bars, which Junhui didn’t seem to be intending on leaving any time soon, and sat down at his base, peering searchingly into that endless gaze.

All he received was a slow blink, and then more laughter. “This is like Spiderman,” Junhui said, cheekily. When his eyes closed his lashes seemed to sigh against his cheek.

Blankly, Minghao tilted his head. He didn’t watch movies. But something told him to shuffle a few inches backwards, anyway, so that seated upright, their faces were maybe two feet apart. “You said you’d tell me,” he prompted, since no automatic explanation seemed to be forthcoming. “I think I deserve to know.”

Instantly Junhui’s expression seemed to cloud over, turn wistful. It seemed so terribly out of place upon his features that Minghao nearly hastened to tell him to _forget it, it’s okay, I don’t really care anyway_. But he wanted to know. His fingers turned white where they gripped his camera as he tried not to shake off the guilt for asking.

“You do,” Junhui conceded at length, still upside-down, still swaying gently side to side. Like a riverside rush, pulled cruelly out of its place by a bank and made to live the same in the heart of a mechanical city. “I just don’t really know what to say, I guess.”

He sounded small. Minghao looked at him, and blinked slowly, not exactly sure what to say in such a strange situation. Settled for, “I can wait.”

Junhui let out a small noise of glee at that, like there was a joke to be had here. “True, that,” he hummed, head tilted left as he blinked up at Minghao. “You gave me five months before you asked me again. That’s longer than most people can manage.”

 _What people_ , Minghao thought, but didn’t say. Instead, he said, “So are you going to tell me?”

The other boy startled, suddenly, and looked blurry around the edges. Minghao blinked rapidly twice, eyes locked on Junhui’s, as he fell suddenly out of the space directly in front of him. Instinct told him to look right, where Junhui seemed to melt into being, the see-saw gently beginning to sink before he had legs with which to hold on to it.

“Sorry.” When he had a face he looked appropriately sheepish. “I’m – I’m not very stable in time, I guess,” he offered, standing up and heading for a rocking-horse to sit side-saddle on instead. It creaked with disuse as he rocked its spring. “Sometimes I’m here, and then sometimes I’m not.”

Minghao stood up, taking a step closer so he could look at the way Junhui’s hands curled into the durable metal of the playground toy, completely solid, whitening at the tips. Thought about how you could be looking Junhui in the eye and still not be sure he was really listening to you, how sometimes their conversations seemed to consist entirely of lines drawn directly parallel to each other, racing endlessly without intersection into infinity.

He inhaled very slowly, and for quite a time. “I can see that,” he mumbled, eventually, and then, glancing at the _02:43 am_ on his watch, “Come on, timelord. You can walk me home.”

 

\---

 

“Do you ever go anywhere else?” Minghao found himself asking, curious as the weak afternoon light drifted in and settled upon the mess of Junhui’s hair. “Any - any _time_ , I mean.” The correction weighed heavy on his tongue. In lieu of anything else to say he spun his pen, notes on _The Advancement of the Economy by the Expansion of the Tokyo Railway_ long abandoned.

Junhui, from his spot on his bed, curled tighter around the frog’s head plushie in his grasp. His mouth pulled tight for a moment before he exhaled with a _pop_. “I – not exactly,” he replied, moulding Froggert’s face with his hands methodically as he did. Minghao slid a disapproving gaze down, but today Junhui was too distracted to notice the look, and did not stop.

“What does that even mean,” he deadpanned, foregoing even the effort it took to raise the end of his question.

“It means – ah, _fuck_ ,” Junhui said, and then Froggert was lying face-down on Minghao’s dorm bed, and he was reappearing by the window. His hand still looked a little bit glitchy when he said, “I think if I’m not here I just don’t exist. It’s never happened long enough for me to check.” It seemed to have solidified when he set it out on the tabletop and hummed, fingers drumming lightly on the standard-issue wood laminate.

Minghao blinked slowly, by now accustomed to the time-phasing. His gaze zeroed in on Junhui’s third-and-a-halfth finger, quivering desperately as if it was trying to hold on to existence as he said, in confirmation, “You’ve never visited, like, 14th century Korea, or something.”

Junhui let out a peal of delight. “ _Oh_ , like that drama. Hwarang, was it, with the pretty boys?” His sigh, though put-on, was a touch dreamy when he clutched his hands to his chest and intoned, wistfully, “I wish.”

There was a _click_ , and Junhui let out a noise of mock outrage at Minghao’s bent head, checking his camera display. “I should start charging you for those,” he quipped. “At least let me see.”

Minghao’s head shot up, eyes briefly wild before they settled in an expression of being absolutely unimpressed. “Absolutely not,” he said, “You’re just a dude who’s all non-sticky in time, not a vampire or something. Use a mirror if you really must admire yourself.”

Junhui would have had a comeback, he knew, something clever about how he could admire himself all day and still not be done. Minghao could hear it all in his head. But that voice was dying, now silent as he watched as Junhui looked at him, and then at his own hands, and then at him, and then at his own hands, and then at him and then at his own hands andthenathim.

There was something deeply unsettling about the way his head seemed to turn at the exact same angle each time, how his hands moved through the same tiny arc as they came up towards his face. Almost as if –

Almost as if Junhui was stuck in some kind of morbid replay.

Concurrently he was glitching, the way he always did before he would disappear and inevitably rematerialise a few feet away in any other direction, looking vaguely put-off but otherwise unharmed. Seized with sudden fear Minghao reached out a hand, wondering what would happen if they touched. If he was seeing any of this right. A very small voice that must have been his own escaped him.

“Junhui?”

Junhui’s image had frozen, the only continued movement the flickering in and out of visibility. Then it was suddenly moving, as if Junhui had said and done all of these things within the span of five minutes and it had been sped up to fit into two seconds, and his mouth was opening and closing and he was saying something but it was impossible to catch. Despite the eeriness Minghao did move forward then, and tried to take hold of his arm, thinking that maybe if Junhui was holding on to somebody who couldn’t escape time, then he wouldn’t, either.

But when he closed his fingers around that strangely birdlike wrist they only came to touch each other, folding in upon empty air. And even when the sun had sunk below the horizon and the sky had washed an inky, tumultuous blue, there was no sudden ungainly laughter, no re-apparition in his room.

 

\---

 

A remembered conversation. Something like…

“You sure spend a lot of your time doing all sorts of things that can’t constitute studying, for a university student.”

“Nobody studies in their first year, we just have to clear modules. Of course I’m going to have fun before I have to actually pay attention in class.”

“You don’t, though.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t do all the fun things people your age are supposed to do, like partying, and meeting new people, or whatever.”

“ _’Your age_ ’? Jun. We’re practically the same age.”

“I forget, sometimes.”

“What, that I’m a year younger than you?”

“No.” Pause. “That I’m… here.”

“You’re real to me, though.”

Silence.

“And.” An exhale. “I like spending time with you.”

“Really?”

“You honestly don’t have to sound so surprised. I’m not really the type of person to hang out with timehopping bridge trolls if I don’t have to.”

“I’m not a troll! I’m beautiful!”

“Trolls don’t have to be ugly. Don’t be speciesist, Junnie.”

A beat. “Well, if I had to be a troll, I’d be the prettiest one.”

A click, the mechanical blinking of a lens. Minghao, examining the display before commenting.

“Yeah. You would.”

 

\---

 

“Missed me?”

He knew that voice. Minghao stood, suddenly, and moved away from his desk to take hold of Junhui, even though his hands were cold and not entirely all there. The other seemed to startle at having his hands held, but only wriggled his fingers experimentally, testing the boundaries of the grip.

“Jun,” he said, and did not bother to lie. “Yeah. I did.”

It was something beautiful, to watch a smile break across Junhui’s face. Like daybreak after an endless night.

“I missed you, too,” Junhui said, and it was all clarity and bright honesty and open, open sun. But then. “I had to really fight my way back here. This time, it was – ” His eyes cast down, then up. “There’s a limbo,” he said, finally, an inch-thick line drawing itself briefly out of his face, the lacuna travelling through his form like a bad cable TV signal. “I’ve seen it, now.”

“It’s been three months.” Minghao’s mouth tightened, and became a slash across the bottom of his face. “You’re still,” he said. Shifted his hand to loop around Junhui’s wrist. Didn’t let go.

“Yeah,” Junhui confirmed, raising his free hand to examine it carefully. “I don’t know how long I’ll stay.”

An urgency overtook him. Minghao kept his hold steady as he tugged Junhui away from where he was standing in the light of the window, and pulled him towards the other side of his room, where there was a photo wall. Stood there, and waited as Junhui looked. Let him see what he was supposed to see.

“These,” Junhui mumbled, eyes fixed on a segment of the wall, a miniature series of prints. “These are photos of me.”

“You exist,” Minghao pressed. Insisted. In his grip he might have imagined that Junhui’s hand had grown heavier.

Unconsciously, Junhui’s hand twisted around so the grip was reciprocal, their hands linked. He lightly tugged him forward when he said, sounding stricken with awe, “I do.” His other hand came out, reaching, before it suddenly jerked back, an inch from the glossy paper. “Can I – ?”

Minghao’s mouth was dry with an odd sort of guilt. “Yeah, of course,” he mumbled, “Go ahead. They’re just photos. And they’re of you, anyway.”

A silence ensued, the other pressing his nose so closely to the wall it seemed as if he was trying to crawl inside the photographs themselves. Minghao wondered briefly if that would be preferable.

“’Hao,” Junhui was saying now, still with that implacable wonder. His hand would not leave the first photo, the one where he was upside down on the monkey bars, smiling  unabashedly at the cameraperson. “I’ve never had proof like this, before.”

Brashly, Minghao reached out and peeled the photo off the wall. Thrust it into Junhui’s hands as he said, “Keep it.” When he folded the other’s fingers over the paper he could have sworn they were warmer now, corporeal enough to leave little smudge marks in the glossy finish.

“’Hao, I,” Junhui said again, softly, “I couldn’t.” His hand quivered slightly where it had shifted so he was gripping on to the photo, like it was a float and he was out at sea and he had never learned to swim.

“I can always print more,” Minghao said, eyes dropping to the base of Junhui’s neck, where one last pixel kept blinking insistently. “I just wanted you to know.”

The sentence was incomplete. Junhui’s eyes widened, anyway, in a sudden understanding. He slid the photo inside his jacket pocket, then took Minghao’s other hand, enveloping his two in his own. “Thank you,” he said, voice low. His neck looked fine, now.

Minghao took a deep breath. “Don’t mention it,” he said, in a rush, and made to untangle them both, feeling strangely foolish.

But he was prevented from doing so when Junhui tugged insistently on his hand. His eyes were like they were then, large and dark, like they would always be. “Don’t let go,” Junhui said softly. “I want to stay here.” A pause. “In this moment.”

The words laid heavy across Minghao’s skull, in all their iterations of meaning. Outside the world was deathly bright, sunlight glaring off snow turning everything white wherever you turned to look. It made the day nearly impossible to stand, like gazing directly into the sun.

But it was the same, looking at Junhui, and he did so anyway, knowing he might disappear at any instant.

So he conceded.

“Okay,” Minghao said, softly, and kept him closer.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry i know i could've done this better but 235ertoewit WELL anyway [find me on twitter babey](http://twitter.com/frogbabey). i will try to put out better content in 2019 xoxo


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